Arcade Fire seems to be doing very well; certainly, Phoenix is doing very well.

After a couple of failed attempts, I came up with a weird tuning where I was dropping the G string down a step so that it became a seventh, and it got me to a place where I could play all these figures fairly easily. It was not an easy thing to work out.

But by taking the time away, getting myself off the treadmill, and just slowing down and learning, I felt I had so much more to give back. And maybe that was something that needed to happen for all of us.

Even though I had pushed through the Tango album, it was just not a very good environment to be in on a daily basis. In many ways, this is the best time of my life.

I also learned to be more confident, to trust my instincts more.

I didn't take lessons, and I don't know my scales.

I had to seal off my feelings about Stevie while seeing her every day and having to help her, too. But you get on with it. What was happening to the band was much bigger than any of that.

I just find things that work and embellish them.

I'm also married for the first time, and I have two kids. So there's some kind of good karma right now.

Ironically, that was quite a bit of the appeal of Rumours. It's equally interesting on a musical level and as a soap opera.

It's really touching that we can come back after so long and care about making an album that says as much as this one does. And after all this time, we really do care about each other.

Some days I would be there at ten in the morning and wouldn't leave till ten at night, and the others would waltz in for a couple of hours and then leave, because I was doing that painting thing. And they were happy to see that being done.

That's one strength that Stevie has. She's really not a strong instrumentalist in any way. Her instrument is her voice and her words. And it keeps her focused on the very center of that.

The 12 years I was in Fleetwood Mac before were not particularly happy years. I was not in a very good place, psychologically, when I left. I didn't have a lot of confidence in what I was doing.

The writing is all done, so it's all about verbalizing everything from point A to point B, and certainly there's a bit of politics involved, so it's a different thing.

This time, there were no drugs involved. The hours were completely normal daytime hours. I think we were able to appreciate the interplay, where before we had taken it for granted.

Those 12 years, they were ambiguous at best.

When I work alone, it can be like dabbling with a canvas. Maybe you paint over bits, and it starts to form its own life and lead you off in a direction. It becomes an intuitive, subconscious process.

When I work alone, my process is like painting. With Fleetwood Mac, it's more like movie making.

When Stevie and I joined the band, we were in the midst of breaking up, as were John and Christine. By the time Rumours was being recorded, things got worse in terms of psychology and drug use. It was a large exercise in denial - in order for me to get work done.

When you become successful on the level that Fleetwood Mac did, it gives you financial freedom, which should allow you to follow your impulses. But oddly enough, they become much harder to follow.

You know, I was never totally thrilled with being a Fleetwood Mac member, but surprisingly, I was having such a good time reuniting with John, Mick, and Stevie.

There have been several occasions during the course of Fleetwood Mac over the years where we've had to undermine whatever the business axioms might be to sort of keep aspiring as an artist in the long term, and the 'Tusk' album was one of those times.

I think when you work alone - the way I do it, anyway - you could sort of liken it to painting, where there's sort of a one-on-one with the canvas.

I can't judge myself by 'God Only Knows.' No one writes songs as good as that.

I'm not really concerned with the outer success.

I'm in the position where I don't have to make commercial music to feed myself, so I have the luxury of being more experimental, if that's what I choose to do. I guess I've earned the right by being in the business for a while and paying the dues and taking the lumps.

Warner Bros. never really got behind the solo work. They always kind of drew a blank. I think they always were thinking, 'Well, this is nice, but let's get back to what's really important.'

A house full of new furniture doesn't mean a whole lot.

I love to be in the studio. That's what I like to do best.

I'm trying to break down preconceptions about what pop music is.

I don't know what 'genius' even means. It's just a matter of keeping your eye on the ball.

You just get out there and be what you want to be. That's part of evolving and part of staying true to yourself - part of remaining alive in a real authentic, long-term sense creatively: not listening to what other people tell you to be.

That's one of the real downfalls of celebrity. You're something that's about you at some point, and that gets latched onto and pumped into the machinery. Then you start having a million other people telling you who you are, and what you should be doing and why, and it's easy to lose your way.

As autobiographical as say the stuff on 'Rumours' was, I don't think we thought of it as such when we were writing it.

I actually like Taylor Swift. I admire what she's been able to do on some levels.

I seldom look back.

There have been times when I've feared for my own well-being in the great scheme of things because, historically, the track record has not been kind to the guitar players in this band.

We really were poised to make 'Rumours 2,' and that could've been the beginning of kind of painting yourself into a corner in terms of living up to the labels that were being placed on you as a band.

If things are crazy in the studio, usually the road is times 10.

Lyrically, you know, most of the things on 'Rumours' were very autobiographical and very much conversations the three writers were having with other members of the band.

When you make music, and even if it's commercially successful, it doesn't mean that it's going to hold up. It takes time to sort of take stock of what you've done and whether it's got legs and whether it's going to really have a place.

Defining something being a Fleetwood Mac song is calling it a Fleetwood Mac song, you know? Nothing becomes Fleetwood Mac until that's what you call it.

I do think my lyrics have gotten... not necessarily more poetic, but more open to interpretation; they're less literal.

I couldn't put any kind of label on my production aesthetic.

I guess you can look at Fleetwood Mac as the 'Pirates Of The Caribbean' movies and my solo career as indie films.

If you look at the whole time I was in the band, I only did, like, three solo albums - two, really. 'Out Of The Cradle,' I had already left because we'd done 'Tango In The Night,' and it was sort of the logical extension of crazy in terms of everyone getting ready to hit the wall with their habits.

I honestly think part of the appeal of 'Rumours' was that it was sort of heroic. We managed to push through in the face of so much personal adversity.

'Tango' was a good experience, looking back on it, and it seems to hold up pretty well.

You could almost say I'm someone who doesn't practice age.